


On the Pursuits of Samurai in the 19th Century

by calerine



Category: Arashi (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Edo Period, M/M, Magic, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-27
Updated: 2016-10-27
Packaged: 2018-08-27 07:51:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8393317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calerine/pseuds/calerine
Summary: A reimagining of Commodore Perry’s arrival in Japan in 1853, but with Arashi as samurai and magic.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [augustfai](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=augustfai).



 

> “In 1853, Commodore Matthew Perry of the United States arrived in Japan as the most determined carrier yet of this simple message: Agree to trade in peace, or suffer the consequences in war.”

_\-- The Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa Time to the Present, p. 49._

  

 

> “We know that the ancient laws of your imperial majesty’s government do not allow of foreign trade, except with the Chinese and the Dutch; but as the state of the world changes and new governments are formed, it seems to be wise, from time to time, to make new laws.”

_\-- Letter of Millard Fillmore (President of the United States of America) to His Imperial Majesty, the Emperor of Japan, November 13, 1852._

 

 

**Prologue**

They are as common as the swordsmiths, the sake brewers, the miso makers; methods and recipes passed down from parent to child, and then their children after that. As soon as he could, Jun’s older sister taught him how to follow the warmth in the heart of his palms to their neighbour’s lost kittens in their rain barrels. In his adolescence, Ohno accompanied his mother as she pulled dark clouds from one village into another so that their lord’s paddy fields could drink their fill.

No one really knows when it started; the official scripts from Heian talk about men and women who had the spark of _kami_ in their being, Buddha’s touch in their hearts. Sho has seen them, always mentioned so briefly that they are footnotes and afterthoughts in the history of his beloved land, with the origins of himself at the end of this long, thin thread. In his head, he imagines it stretching from the formation of the islands, winding through the ages like a serpent in the clouds and ending in him - awful athleticism, red sparks and all.

The storytellers tell of them throughout time, who drew goodness from the earth for others around them, who were imbued with the purity of the heavens, and whose presence warded away punishment. Once, Nino’s mother told him he was a blessing to the Ninomiya name. _We have never had anyone who could, who would have thought?_ She had said, then in the next breath told him off for sending his chopsticks across the table to scrape the last sliver of mackerel from its bones. _That does not mean - !_ She had chided, and magic or not, Nino’s sister never had qualms about twisting her fingers in the softest part of his thigh for that.

Aiba practised alongside the boys who were training to be samurai like their fathers, their bows and arrows flying sure with a helpful flick of his wrist and hitting bullseye every single time until it ceased to be sport anymore. By then, peace had gone on for so long that war was a distant din in their memories, just a ghost haunting the stories that their fathers told them in the orange-red glow of candlelight - a necessary detour to the actual tale.

 _Get to the fighting!_ Aiba’s little brother would ask, and Aiba remembers his eagerness in his eyes shining bright in the light. Their mother would let slip a fond smile in the corner of her lips, as she sat mending their kimono with her orange glimmering across the fabric.

 _Be patient,_ their father would say, sending green swirling in a small typhoon across the floor. Green finding shape and colour in armoured men with their banners flying high, green forming the mountainsides of Sekigahara, green torching the pale tatami so it transformed into a sweeping battlefield that stopped at the very edge of Aiba’s toes.

 

 

▶　相葉

Summer: Aiba spends the days daydreaming about his favourite memories when he is meant to be doing work; the river behind his old town, watermelon juice sweet and red down the heel of his palm catching the salt of his skin, Nino and Sho’s laughter lines under his wandering lips. The progression of his lord’s accounts slow into a trickle from his desk like ants drunk on the heat of the day, and deadlines start nipping at his ankles. But still, Aiba’s gaze wanders from the numbers to life outside the paper doors, children playing in the manicured gardens and paper windmills spinning in a lethargic breeze.

When the black ships arrive in Uraga Bay, it is right in the middle of this season when the days are at their longest and cricket cries at their loudest. All day, Aiba is restless, leg jiggling and fingers drumming incessantly against the lacquered top of his desk. For hours, sparks tickle restlessly at his fingertips, skating across the beads of his abacus like lovers flirting under the full moon.

It distracts him, it distracts the rest of the men too, when the knobby part of his knee knocks on and off against the underside of his low desk so many times that it swells and Nagase is yelling at Aiba to get ahold of himself. The merchant from Osaka - Murakami, Aiba recalls - glares so hard that some books would have caught fire if there was magic in his blood. But Aiba only apologises sheepishly, finding it hard to feel truly sorry when there are samurai’s wives on the adjacent _engawa_ holding delicate porcelain dishes piled high with _kakigori_ in their hands. One of them finds him staring and he smiles, half in reply and half in knowing what he will spend his saving on - ice shavings the height of Fuji-san, full, fresh flesh of pink peaches, and too much sickly golden syrup running down his throat. He almost swallows his tongue _thinking_ about it.

The day runs on without Aiba. Slowly, the green about his hands darken into the shade of cedar trees and spreads like a forest fire to the wood of his desk, his grindstone, his brushes. Once, one of the younger accountants with his brushes awash in pink meets Aiba’s eyes across the room, and Aiba sees that that the ink on his scrolls have been stained primrose pink too.

By the time gold glints in the distance, the tatami around Aiba is alight with emerald, and messengers are arriving, red-faced and breathless, with reports of colours spreading to engulf entire houses, burning like furnaces but destroying nothing.

By the time Aiba finally unfolds his legs, Sho is throwing open the door with such a force that the wood rattles in its frame. It turns maroon in an instant.

By then, Edo is in chaos.

*

The outsiders want to conduct business with the Emperor.

Those are the pretty words they use at least, written in their horizontal scrawls that took Jun too long to translate, so used he was to the language of the Dutch. Afterwards, they sound much harsher from Sho’s lips, when he spits them out in his room, the heat of his anger stark against the cool dimness of his room. The crickets sing outside as always, indifferent to his despair.

_They want to force open a port; they want what they do not have._

Red burns intensely at his fingertips, lighting up the hem of his kimono except nothing darkens but the scroll in his hand, flames licking the edges until the words are framed by black, black as the ships docked Uraga Bay. A moment ago, he had shown them what he had seen this afternoon from horseback, red shapes climbing like creepers against a garden wall as crimson turned to dusk, then to the inky black of night. A squadron of four ships measured out in exact formation, as if someone had calculated the optimal distance to exude as much power as they could, to take up as much space as they dared to of Nippon’s seas, then their sails, dark as the day was bright.

Their audacity infuriates Sho. “How _dare_ they - “ Sho breaks off suddenly. Burnt paper falls to ash and crumbles in his hands. Aiba feels the scorching heat of his anger, like once when he stood too close to a sword maker’s stove and burnt off his eyebrows.

“Sho-kun,” Ohno says, placing a soothing hand on Sho’s wrist so blue sweeps over the red, and for an instant, their colours flicker into violet before Sho is taking a shuddering breath and exhaling slowly.

“You were not there, Ohno-kun,” Sho tries again, the words tremble in the silence. Aiba finds Nino’s eyes across the room, the uncertain twist of his lip, his fidgeting fingers upon his knee. There is no yellow in sight, but Nino has more control than any of them.

“Their ships run not on the power of man, nor the power of the heavens. They have strength in weaponry beyond our imagination, ” He spread out his palm and the ships are back, towering over scattered fishing boats, menacing in their strangeness. It strikes Aiba then how impossibly loud they are; smoke and smog, thick and toxic rising from the towers and turning the air around it grey. They are certainly ships fitting for ghosts, the sheer din of them and this plain display of might that contains nothing elegant nor pure. A flick of Sho’s wrist and the scene transforms into an audience chamber, a group of the white ghosts neither bowing nor kneeling before a party of bakufu officials. There are gifts, foreign things, a long carriage with its own steel road that runs without interference, lenses with which to find the stars, all laid out with thinly veiled arrogance. Then one of the ghosts brings out a calf, a young animal before its prime, stamping its hooves and straining against the leash around its neck.

 _Look_ , _it’s curious how our magic is quite different from yours,_ the Commodore says gesturing to the calf, metal glinting sunlight from his chest. Thick dread beats in Aiba’s chest, but Jun is the one who gasps first.

The man snaps his fingers, a force rising from his hand, and the calf crashes to his forelegs as if dropped from a height, crumpling into the dirt and kicking up a cloud of dust in its panic. The four of them watch horrorstruck as it cries out futilely, veins turning dark and the darkness spreading throughout its body as it struggles and struggles and at last becomes still.

Its dying breaths ring out between them, echoes stifling under the low roof.

Sho cleans the image away and Aiba finds himself blinking at the tatami, tears in his eyes.

“They made it quite clear,” his voice is grave. “That it was less a request than a threat.”

*

Aiba takes Sho and Nino home that night, even though his room is the smallest of them all. Tonight, he wants them close.

Jun brings Ohno back too, to his parents’ house where the servants will serve them dinner and where Jun’s parents are sure to be talking about the ships. They will be safe there. Aiba watches them disappear into the night, the hollyhock leaves on their kimono fading into the evening as they speak in low voices and walk so close their shoulders bump. Aiba murmurs a spell under his breath then, for their feet to stay sure and steady on the path - just in case.

The three of them fall into Aiba’s spare futons without a word.

Sho, so loud and firm before, appears drained now, the shadows under his eyes made darker in the weak candlelight. Aiba gives in to the urge to touch his hand to Sho’s wrist, up his arm to the slope of his back, his lips to Sho’s lips, to his temple, to his hair. The green of him mingles with the red of Sho, slipping under the hem of his loosened kimono and across his heavy shoulders until he gives up a quiet sigh. Then, Aiba traces the lines in Nino’s palm, coaxing out a pale chrysanthemum yellow that drifts upwards like flower petals into the night, higher and higher so they make constellations against Aiba’s ceiling.

None of them sleep.

In the grey light of dawn, Aiba thinks of the calf, life dragged slowly from its chest as it laid gasping on the ground, and shudders.

 

 

▶　櫻井

They have all fought, yes, as all boys did in the moments between lessons, someone’s colour the shade of sand pinning another boy to the ground until he yelled _forfeit!_ They had unofficial duels after training sessions as young men, returning home with cut lips and bloodied noses that their mothers pressed rags to and fussed over. They fought, yes, enthusiastically and fiercely and without concern for their own safety, but only to be crowned champion over the schoolyard for an afternoon or to prove something irrevocably insignificant - never like this, never to maim nor kill.

After all, this was not the purpose of magic, so it would not let them.

*

Sho shifts into consciousness from a fitful sleep.

The night weighs heavy on his mind as if a hand pressing against his head into the hardness of his pillow, forcing his eyes back towards his empty dreams. Sunlight streams in through the doors that Aiba had left open the night before, when they tumbled under the covers, the remnants of anger muddling into murky confusion and a forsaken dream of yesterday afternoon.

Sho holds his breath until his lungs start to hurt, then releases.

“ - will go,” Nino’s low voice drifts over from some far corner of the room. There is a hard edge to his words. Sho imagines him hunched over, kimono loose around his waist as Aiba takes his time to slick his hands with oil and comb Nino’s hair downwards, to his shoulderblades. Sho almost goes to them then, but -

Aiba hums. “Sho-chan would not approve,” he offers, and Sho holds himself still. Then, “But then again, I do not fancy the idea of you alone and in close proximity to these foreigners either.”

Nino sighs shortly, impatiently. The crackle of paper in restless hands. “Then come with me. The fight will be futile anyway; there is nothing we can do.”

“They say they will return in a year.” Aiba is quiet, and coaxing and torn, afraid to wake Sho but afraid of this too, the prospect of his own helplessness. Sho recognises this tone. He remembers being twenty-two and Aiba twenty with a hasty, stammered confession hanging in the air between them, followed by a _say something, Sho-chan, please._

“What is a year? If Jun-kun is right, our magic will not allow us to kill, Aiba-chan. And I think he is. Consider it: mine will allow me to incapacitate at most, and yours might not let you draw blood, even. Unless we can find some method of arming an army in such a short span of time - _impossible_ , and you know it.”

“Will the bakufu let us?” Aiba’s voice is patient and calm in comparison.

“What do you think?” Aiba does not answer. “Do you think the bakufu will give orders to allow our gang of misfits to play childish pranks on potential invaders?” Nino barks a laugh, high and harsh. It reminds Sho of the first time he saw Nino at the head of a criminal’s parade. They have not spoken about that case for years, but Sho still recalls the hazy details; a scandal and dirty evidence stained with the blood of innocent men and women just trying to make a living. It haunts him still, that image of Nino strutting down the main streets of Edo with this look on his face, sallow-eyed and on the edge of an abyss that was devoid of any other hue.

Then Sho hears a sigh, and perhaps it is Nino, perhaps it is Aiba who has never known war in his life, nor men who use their abilities to draw breath from another. None of them have.

A cool breeze stirs the still air in the humid room and unwittingly, Sho shivers.

Aiba and Nino fall silent. “Good morning, sleepyhead. Your duties are calling,” Nino sings out, a smirk in his voice. Chapped lips touch Sho’s temple and when he opens his eyes, Aiba’s smile is so close it feels like the sun on his face.

In that moment, Sho thinks nothing of black ships or the blood of slaughtered calves soaking into the dry earth or the white ghosts boasting afterwards, thinking Sho ignorant of their tongue, that they did not need their abilities to do the same to a man.

(He had not shown the rest that; they had not needed to see.)

*

Aiba steams rice for breakfast in a bamboo pot over his stove. In the sunrays coming in through the door, the steam makes rainbows in the air. They have it with pickled plums, sour pink flesh sinking into the soft, starchy fresh grains.

After picking at his food for ages, Nino produces the message from his sleeve wordlessly, the line of his brow deepening. It is in Jun’s neat, ordered hand, although haste has made a few strokes clumsier than usual.

 

> _Aiba Masaki, Ninomiya Kazunari, Sakurai Sho:_
> 
> _This is urgent, so I will keep it short._ _My mother mentioned in passing yesterday that she had not heard of abilities being used in such a way since centuries ago, remembering only faintly that one of Father’s documents stating that Oda Nobunaga tasked specific pairs of trusted samurai with scouting purposes during his campaigns, implying that they had magic. Leader and I spoke into the early hours of the morning, and it occurs to me that the Dutch on Dejima use their abilities for inventions and creations. Their literature states quite explicitly that “the purpose of these scholarly flair of magi are best used when aiding the advancement of humanity through scientific endeavours”. Similarly - Han Chinese scholars are writing at length about strategies for attack to be used for the rebellion against their Manchurian masters._ _This is only a simple hypothesis, but one that seems to ring true - Perhaps we only know our colours to be used for peace only because we are familiar - complacent almost - with peace. We do not wish to presume, but this seems possible._
> 
> _Jun of the Matsumoto House, Ohno Satoshi_

 

“So,” Aiba draws the word out, finally giving up the pretense of eating at all. The rice in his bowl lay disturbed, stirred up by his restless chopsticks. “What do you think?”

Sho looks up to meet Nino’s troubled gaze, then Aiba’s. “Does this mean our colours can be schooled to do the same as the foreigners?”

A minute shiver runs through Aiba then. Perhaps this was not something that had crossed their minds, perhaps Nino’s had lept straight to the insurmountability, and Sho can see why. Nino reaches a hand to Aiba’s sleeve, then changes his mind and comes to fit himself in the small space between Aiba and Sho’s bodies, his head to Aiba’s shoulder, his hand to Sho’s thigh.

They are all thinking of the same thing, Sho can see it in the picture of their faces; the calf, the calf, the calf.

“Perhaps... if we enter a time of war,” Sho muses. Despite himself, he cannot imagine war, the grisly humanity, the physicality of bodies destined to be strewn out open on a battlefield, or two, or hundreds across the land. That is what constitutes a war, is it not? The sheer magnitude of death, armies leaving destruction in their wake, but all he knows about the subject comes only from words and pictures printed from wood carvings. No one has fought in one for centuries, and Sho cannot decide if it is worth the grief; the choice between freedom and war.

He takes Nino’s hand.

“Perhaps,” Nino answers, closing his eyes. Sho watches a breath escape his ajar lips. His head rolls on the hinge of his neck, ending up with his face in the alcove of Aiba’s neck.

“But do we want to do that too?” Aiba swallows, uncertain. His gaze flickers to Sho’s, then the floor, his fingers picking at the threads of his _zabuton_ restlessly. Nino would usually tells him off for that. “Do we want to become like them?”

And for the first time, Sho is at a loss for words.

 

 

▶　二宮

“You were listening,” Nino states shortly afterwards.

Aiba left for the accountants’ compound hours ago, and Nino and Sho had slipped their feet into straw sandals and strolled in silence across the narrow streets between the samurai residences to Nino’s room. There is an uncertainty that hangs in the air, palpable almost in the downturned gazes that flicker across the red drifting from Sho’s fingers and then, skittering sideways into the gutters.

It is no use being coy now; Nino had sensed the change in Sho’s breathing the moment he grew conscious. He simply had not mentioned it with Aiba around. Otherwise, it might have escalated into an argument ending in too long days of stiff, awkward silences, and Aiba’s despair turned suffocating between the two of them. Their fights have always favoured spectators, after all.

“Yes,” Sho replies, just as short. He is staring at the stray cat that Nino leaves food out for. It is on the engawa, stretched out and asleep in a sunny patch of the wood. A fly buzzes around it. Its ear flicks, but it does not wake.

“And?”

“And Aiba-chan is right. I do not approve, if only because we are the shogun’s men and cannot act without bakufu orders,” but just as Nino is about to let slip a treasonous barb, Sho leans back on his elbows and meets his eyes. Here, his voice drops, his posture softens, and there is shade there that Nino does not recognise. “Nino, you do not understand.” He pauses, and looks conflicted.

Nino waits. He resists an urge to move, to sit taller, to fold his arms across his chest.

At times Sho’s face is clear as day, as the sun in a cloudless sky, and other times it is unreadable, masking an incoming storm or some other. Nino carves out a living reading the language of bodies, but when it comes to Sho, the same rules do not seem to apply.

When he was younger, Sho’s expressions were much plainer, and he was quicker to anger too, outbursts of emotion that would send their teachers’ rod cracking across his shoulders. So he had grown out of that, mellowed into surety that Nino admires. But on short, stifling summer nights, Nino catches himself missing that Sho sometimes, the younger one who brought the ocean into a public bathhouse once because the beach was too far away, and who snuck a cheeky grin at Nino afterwards when they stood, shame-faced and drenched in front of their headmaster.

Now Sho goes on. “You did not meet these men like I did. They are not here to negotiate, their polite words are all a farce of the West; their gunboats - those _monsters -_ ” he breaks off, breathing hard, and suddenly, it dawns on Nino suddenly that it is fear. This tremor in Sho’s throat, the stiff set of his shoulders and spine. He has never seen Sho carry it before; it makes for an ill-fitting burden on his back.

Sho clears his throat and tries again, a grim determination to his tone. “Let me say this first, there is no version of this in which Nippon wins.”

“No, there is not,” Nino agrees. _This is why I must go, this is why we must put up any kind of fight,_ he almost says but Sho goes on.

“So like Aiba-chan - like Aiba-chan, I am discomforted by the idea of you going there. You will not be victorious, Nino, you of all people should know that.”

Nino crosses his arms then, pulls his knees to his chest and says nothing.

He wants to be open to being this vulnerable too, to saying fully what he means. But where Sho grew out of his emotions, Nino has never quite grown into them, outside the verses that he keeps hidden away from the prying eyes. It is a strength in his line of work, but not now, not when he wants to turn to Sho and to set his gaze on this man who has never been prone to being sickly sentimental even as a child. It has never come as naturally to either of them as it does to Aiba. And yet -

“I love this land, I have grown up loving every part of it,” Sho continues, wringing out his hands then clasping them together so tight the knuckles pale. His voice shakes like an earthquake. The cat on the engawa is catching his colour, turning from grey to cherry red. Nino can the heat of his flush from this close. “But what will become of me without you - or Aiba-chan?”

All of a sudden, everything becomes reveals itself. Nino is struck with a lightness, an urge to burst into laughter but Sho looks so stricken that Nino’s heart aches.

“Sho-chan,” he murmurs on the end of a sigh, and crosses the space between the edges of their _zabuton_ to clutch the kimono hem over Sho’s heart. It is a muted colour, navy and soft from use. Sho turns to face Nino when he tugs, and there are shadows across his face.

He must have been thinking about this since he saw the ships. Nino thinks of his anger during the gathering the previous evening, then how he had tossed in his sleep as if an enemy had gripped his spirit. It had taken Aiba’s gentle palm against his cheek and an incantation for his breathing to even out. Even then, Nino had heard Sho sleep-talking in his dreams, the incoherent and panicked shapes his lips made against Nino’s throat hanging over a restless vision of an endless, empty harbour.

Now Nino rests his palm where Aiba had cupped Sho’s face, fitting his shorter fingers to the faint trails of green he finds in Sho’s skin. He strokes the tip of thumb across the angle of Sho’s cheekbone, and does not use his colours now.

A second passes. Sho takes a shallow, shivering breath.

“In all our years of knowing each other, have I ever struck you as a martyr before? Like the sort who would give up their life in foolish sacrifice for their country.” Nino cannot resist a chuckle now, and for the first time in a few days, joy comes easily to him, a bubble in his throat that spreads to the rest of his body. The yellow of his hand turns to mustard then to gold, and glows and glows and glows. “I fear, Sho-chan,” Nino says, wiping tears from his eyes, “that you may be mistaking my motivations for your own.”

Sho, caught between his own emotions and Nino’s - perhaps inappropriate - laughter, eyes him unsurely. The cat is awake now, and no less pink than the shade it started with. “I do not know if I should take that as an insult.”

“It is as much a compliment as you are the son of a lord,” Nino tackles Sho to the ground, falling on top of him even though he is slighter. The magic always helps. His sleeves hang like mushroom caps over his bony wrists as he holds himself up for a moment, while Sho’s hands climb his arms slowly.

“What have I said before, about thinking too much?” he says, tapping Sho’s temple with a fingertip and watching the lines of Sho’s brow ease into a warm, toothy smile. Nino leans down and bumps their chins together. But before Sho can protest, Nino is kissing his brow, moving down to the tip of his nose, into his mouth. Their dry lips stick wetly. Nino breathes him in, and their bodies grow hotter in the summer heat.

When they break apart, Sho’s eyes are still close and his lips parted as if he still relieving the sensation of their tongues on each other; their tongues and lips and teeth. Nino studies the flush of his cheeks. In the bright afternoon light, he is so beautiful that Nino wants at the same time to draw closer and pull away, like Ohno does when he wishes to examine the bluish-grey of the distant mountains in order to better impart it to paper. But Nino is no painter, and would not know where to start at all, much less when Sho is concerned.

“So why else would you go?” Sho asks, always looking forward, always so impatient, but it is not yet time for it. So Nino hushes him; at least he has the decency to look chastised.

In their tumble, Sho’s sleeve has ridden up to his forearm and the white of it, the softness faces up towards the sun. Nino traces it with his thumb, a rough callus against the exposed flesh. Yellow leaves a powdery trail that takes a moment to fade. Sho’s hair frames his face like a mane, sticking out from its knot, and Nino wants to kiss him everyday for the rest of his life.

The irises in the garden are in new bloom, white, pink, and purple blossoms with petals drooping like a gift revealing itself.

Nino thinks about the ships docked in Uraga Bay, pumping out dirty clouds that rise and dissipate into the heavens; what will they come back with in the year after? Those 365 days with which the foreigners organise the passing of their time - how fast they will prove to be when all of them are so helpless against the inevitable fate of surrender. “I will go because my colour compels me to. There is no chance of victory, but that knowledge is human. Do I make sense? There is something in me, something in the roots of this land compels me to _do something_ even if it is foolish and in vain.”

Nino feels it when Sho lets out a long breath, his brow furrowed in thought. Perhaps he feels it too, or not. Sometimes Nino and Ohno feel what the others cannot, and in those times, they cannot help but do the things that the colours urge them to. “Then let us go,” Sho replies at last, pulling Nino back down by a hand on the back of his neck. He kisses like a dying man offered a thin sliver of hope, desperate and determined at once, and Nino falls into his embrace, into the meeting of their lips, their noses, into the beat of Sho’s heart against Nino’s thumb, steady in the tender underside of his jaw. The cat - mid-stretch, tail unfurled - purrs in the sun. The imprint of gold on the corner of Sho’s lips lasts all afternoon.

 

 

▶　相葉

Ohno comes by after their afternoon meal.

The other samurai have decided on a game of _tousenkyou_ , but standing rule excludes Aiba because every time he plays, he gets so carried away that his abilities score him maximum points which Nagase always says “should not be humanly possible”. This is usually followed by a roar of dissatisfaction that sounds uncannily like a wild animal, so Aiba is rather puzzled as to who the non-human one is in the ranks - not that he would say anything. Aiba might be magic, but Nagase is something else entirely.

While the others play, Ohno seeks out Aiba, handing him a pair of fresh mackerel tied by their tails with twine. He had caught that morning along the coast while on assignment.

“For you, Sho-kun and Nino,” he says, shielding his eyes from the sun with the broad of his hand, the other arm on his hip. One of the men spins the fan too hand, and it only does a flips backwards before clattering to the ground. Aiba lets out a giggle.

They stand in the shade of a tree together. Ohno has never been a man of many words and right now, Aiba is full on rice, miso soup and tofu and getting sleepy in the early afternoon heat. He tries not to think about the accounts waiting for him at his desk, the two towering stack of taxes from the northern domains. What do they have up there even that requires so much tax?

He is in the midst of pondering this question, so he almost misses it when Ohno hums thoughtfully and says, “I’m going.”

“Going where?” Aiba asks without thinking, then it dawns. “Oh. Nino said that too.”

“Has he decided what he is going to do? Because I have not.” Ohno ducks his head sheepishly, his hand on the back of his neck. He is usually already so tan, but Ohno in summer seems like he could blend into the brown bark of trees quite easily.

“No, though he mentioned playing tricks on them. In jest, I think, although it would not surprise me if he had been sincere.” Aiba must look unsure because Ohno’s nose crinkles in mirth.

“That sounds like him.” And for a moment - as it catches Aiba at some hours of the day - Aiba is glad that Jun and Ohno found each other. Jun would worry himself to the grave if he could, but at least he has Ohno now - always unflappable, always calm - to coax Jun into a stroll or to put down his books for a single second, _come on Jun-kun you have been studying for the whole day, there is much to be learnt from the world outside too._

“Will Matsujun go too?” Aiba asks, thinking about this morning, the looks passed between Sho and Nino. They will wait until he is not present to discuss this. They may argue, and Aiba is relieved that he is no longer obliged to bear witness. Now whatever Nino proposes, Sho will provide a counterpoint, and whatever their negotiations come to, Aiba will be happy to offer an opinion if it concerns him.

Ohno shrugs, an easy wave of his shoulders up and down. “You know how he favours plans; he is trying to come up with one.” Aiba steals a glance at Ohno and lingers on the clearness of his eyes, as if ponds untroubled by children skipping stones. “Maybe you can make clouds follow them for days so it just storms on them. Maybe that will drive them away. Or a typhoon!” Ohno snorts laughter, and the sound rings high into the air. Across the courtyard, Inohara seems to be winning the game, but it is hard to tell when his usual behaviour also entails leaping around in joy.

“I shall relay that to the Guild,” Ohno agrees amiably.

“Weathermakers, making history!” Aiba pumps his fist in the air, and Inohara seems to mistake it for a victorious pump because he mirrors it too.

In the background, Nagase demands a rematch.

*

Something happens between Nino and Sho while Aiba sits inside calculating prefectural imports and exports all day.

Aiba knows this because Nino turns up at his door long after the night soil man had passed Aiba’s front door, his cart rattling and creaking down his street. The stench of excrement had lingered for moments after, until Aiba had sighed and gotten up from his desk to pull the door shut.

They sit together in Aiba’s futon after Nino’s helped himself to rice and tea, Aiba half-in half-out of the covers and Nino sprawled out on top of the duvet, playing with the edges of Aiba’s kimono. The moonlight makes the shadows under his eyes ever more stark.

They do not speak. While Aiba waits, he conjures up a puppy and its ball, letting it lick his fingers and run around them after its rolling toy. Nino only get like this - pensive and wanting - when he needs to say something and is searching for the right way to put it. In and out goes his breath, Aiba keeps time. Outside the crickets cry and the puppy shapeshifts into a horse, a child, a tree.

At the toll of the next bell, Nino slides his feet under the covers, holding out a hand that Aiba takes.

“Will you come too? I will not go if you do not wish to,” Nino asks, even though he does not need to. Aiba would go to the ends of the earth for any of the four of them, much less Nino who used to climb into his futon at school when Aiba cried for his family at night, who knows he never empties his chamber pot on time, even now.

“If I stay here, who is there to make sure you do not go too far and exasperate someone important?” Aiba props his chin up on his hand and looks at Nino so affectionate and pliant in his futon, his bloodshot eyes and weathered hands and soft lips. A drowsiness has settled about them, this delicate stillness that ask that they speak in murmurs and reach out for each other without thinking.

“Sakurai-sensei,” Nino suggests, saying nothing as Aiba’s arm curls over his belly. They share a grin at the image of Sho holding a straining Nino from one of the foreigners.

Aiba laughs. “We would count ourselves lucky if Sho-chan could hold you back, if the sight of them does not set him off again.” He yawns, sinking onto his back, finding Nino’s elbows under the covers, then his wrist with a sharp bone in the corner, then his stubby fingers. “I had not seen him so impulsive for a long time.

There is a quiet thoughtfulness - and a certain fondness - in Nino’s voice when he replies, “No, me neither. But I had missed it.”

“Me too.”

Gradually, sleep intrudes on Aiba’s thoughts, dulling them, but still, Nino stays wide awake in Aiba’s arms, his heartbeat slowing and racing intermittently. So just before he falls asleep, fuelled by the force of habit - and love, Aiba likes to think - he loosens the knots that Nino’s thoughts make, untangles them and smoothes out the lines around his eyes so his exhales run a little lighter.

Their dreams take them at the same time.

 

 

▶　二宮

They set off in the indigo dawn, deciding at the last hour to take their swords despite the fact that Nino and Sho are completely useless at wielding them, and none of them have ever used one in a fight.

“The eyes deceive the mind quicker than we can,” Jun comments with a playful grin, unsheathing his in a smooth arc of his arm through the air, then twirling it by its grip as if he were trying to impress.

“And that was unnecessary,” Nino shoots back, huffing a laugh when Jun’s horse decides to chew on his sleeve. “Matsumoto Jun, the youngest leader of the Elite that Edo has ever seen, and yet still despairing of animals.”

By the time Aiba has helped to free Jun and the servants have strapped their few bags onto the horses, Sho is looking increasingly puzzled.

“Remind me again how many of us are going?” He ventures, cocking his head to the side, one limp finger extended. Ohno frowns. “Five?”

“And how many horses do we have?”

“Four,” Jun replies, sighs so hard that his ancestors probably felt it. “ _Ohno-kun_.”

“This is already going _so_ well,” Nino comments wryly in the ensuing chaos. Ohno mumbles a sheepish apology. Aiba is offering to take Sho because Sho dislikes riding anyway - or Nino! - he is saying, speaking too loud in the morning hush, gesturing - or Ohno or Jun, or anyone at all! Jun makes a face like he would rather sit in the quiet of a palanquin, or sprout wings and fly to the ports than touch another animal again.

But Sho waits for a moment before answering in a lowered voice. “I think you were wrong before,” and Nino is all ready to gasp like a court lady on a hot day when Sho continues, “We are _definitely_ going to win.” Nino mirrors Sho’s posture, stepping back with his hands in his sleeves to survey the scene; Jun speaking to a servant about the possibility of readying another horse, Ohno trying to stop Jun’s horse from eating out of the saddlebags, Aiba asking the horses which one of them will take two men.

Nino snorts. “Oh yes. The foreigners are going to _quake_ when they see us.

“I would,” Sho chirps with the same mischief in his eyes as when sand had started forming piles on the floor of the bathhouse. Then turning to glance at Nino, his hand darts out of his sleeve to squeeze Nino’s fingers.

And even though Aiba has started making arguments for his case and the servant is bowing so low his head is at his knees, Nino strides over to Ohno’s horse. “Let us go, or we will still be here after the sun has come up and gone down again.” His colours give him a small lift and he grips Ohno’s outstretched hand, swinging his legs up and settling in. “Do I need to deliver an encouraging spiel from the top of this majestic horse?” Nino asks, just to be exasperating.

All he hears is a resounding _no_ \- and even a _just go already!_ from Jun - before he yells out an incoherent, vaguely ferocious sound like he has always imagined generals used to during the Warring States Period.

Then - finally, they are off.

 

 

▶　相葉

The journey there is rather uneventful.

Aiba makes friends with a sparrow that ends up stealing so much of Jun’s onigiri that he sends water from a nearby lake to spray at it, making it fly away in a huff chirping angrily about uncivilised No-Wings.

By the time the sun is full and high in the sky, they have found lodging, and the ships.

*

It takes a lot to faze Aiba - at least he likes to think so.

More accurately, it takes a lot to faze Ohno. There was once - Aiba remembers - when he was twenty and something on the way back from a small postal town in the west. Them standing on the side of the road with a viper bite in Ohno’s ankle and him hobbling all the way to the next town without so much as a word of complaint. Then when they got there, he had promptly fainted from the venom, leaving a distinctly human-shaped mark in some rice fields, but that is not the point of the tale.

This is: standing, gazing out at the ships docked at the port, inky bows black as the deepest oceans, would strike fear into any man’s heart. Intermittently, they lunge towards the horizon as if the sinister beasts on their bows were struggling to escape the wood or their hawsers - the thought of either is frightening. It makes Aiba think of wild animals on a too-short, too-thin leashes and snapping teeth that will eventually bite through the ropes that hold them, unless they are tamed.

These have made it quite clear that that will not be.

“I hear they are threatening to sail to Edo themselves if their message is not conveyed to the shogun,” Jun offers in a wondering tone of voice that he usually reserves for poems of the old.

Then, all of a sudden, the sky darkens, clouds gathering fast. In an instant, the calm waters changes from crystal blue to grey, to black, foaming against the shoreline like a creature in itself. Even from the height of the rocky outcrop, Aiba can see the fishermen getting to their feet on their boats, feel their confusion and growing fear radiating outwards.

“Is that you, Leader?” Aiba asks. No one had said anything of a plan, but Aiba has never seen a storm roll in this quick on its own.

Ohno raises empty palms in a shrug.

Then, Nino grips Aiba’s wrist, making him yelp out, though it is immediately drowned out by the howling wind.

 _Watch,_ Nino projects into their minds, and shows them a lady in a peach-coloured yukata, dressed as if she were on her way to a festival. They had walked passed her on the way to the lookout point, and Aiba had overheard her buying _dango_ and had thought her yukata pretty indeed. Now in the vision, the tips of her fingers glow steadily orange.

She is the one drawing the downpour in.

Just then, Ohno gapes. The tempest halts just over the black ships, drawing closer to the beach on the tails of the returning fishing boats but never quite reaching them. Something else is pulling them to land, Aiba can feel it like a vibration in the air, someone else’s magic reverberating outwards, and he can see clearly in his mind’s eye, turquoise ropes tugging the boats into the safety of the harbour.

Nino is laughing when the rain reaches them. The drops beat down hard, but twenty paces back inland and the skies are so clear Aiba wants for _soumen_ , bonfires and dancing.

“Seems like others had to come too,” Sho points out. The creases between his eyes have smoothed out and he looks on the verge of laughing too - a wide smile hanging on the hinge of his lips like it is about to slip into a guffaw in any moment. To the turquoise ropes, he binds red and tugs too, and the boats cut through the waves so swiftly that the men in them cling onto their sides with thrilled hoots, fear dissipating in a second.

On Aiba’s right, Jun constructs a wall in the water a short distance from where the tide breaks, indigo shimmering faintly and forming a clean line between storm and sunny day. The children, who had been playing on the beach when the winds had sent them clutching at their mothers, now emerge again tentatively, and Aiba fills their fathers’ nets with fish despite the shallow waters.

And through heavy rain and winds whipping against the wooden planks of the port, those men and their dark drenched sails do not seem so invincible after all.

 

 

▶　櫻井

For two days, they wreck havoc on the ships, little inconveniences like the persistent disappearances of keys from their rings, making sure there is that few strands of hair that always escape the making up of a hair-do and whipping up a wind in a scholar’s study so their servants run around like dogs after their own tails trying to catch pieces of paper.

That had been Sho’s idea, and without a word, Ohno had twirled his index finger around once, a deep blue trailing sparks in the air. Soon, they saw paper swooping onto the deck of the ships, followed by harried men, all with one arm extended and one arm desperately holding down their hats. Every time one of them came close to grasping the corner of one, Sho twitched and that piece slid right out of reach again. It was awfully childish, but all along the docks men and women stopped their work to watch, mirth catching like wildfire in the late afternoon sun.

More arrive in the days that follow.

They fill out every inn in the town; builders, farmers, merchants, weavers and samurai under the same roof, sharing steamed rice from the same pots.

Aiba tells Sho of a man he met from the north, who had dressed too warm for summer and sold his clothes layer by layer for money to keep moving to Edo. _What is there in the north even?_ Aiba had asked, and the man had shrugged nonchalantly. _Snow,_ he had said and _snow!_ Aiba had repeated to Sho and Ohno over their evening meal, showing them what the man had showed him; a blizzard, snow up to a man’s waist and a whole land covered in white. Then, there are rumours of foxes coming out to the edges of the surrounding forests, just watching and waiting until someone catches sight of them and they slip back into the shadows again silently. The spirits must be watching, Jun supposes when he hears this, tilting his head as if he was trying to see them, too.

Once, Sho leaves their room in the early morning, when the dregs of night still settle deep in the sea and on his way down the narrow steps, overhears a gruff unfamiliar voice speaking with their landlady. At the heavy accent, Sho steadies his feet upon the creaking stairs. For long minutes, he listens in on one of the foreigners asking after them. Their landlady pretends ignorance, _but the five samurai,_ he says and repeats over and over again, growing more and more insistent until Sho almost steps in, red already catching around his hands.

But then, she requests that he leaves. He does, with much fuss, cursing her out loudly and threatening to burn the inn down. Even in the darkness of the stairs, a shiver runs its cold fingers down Sho’s spine.

Only, at their morning meal later, when Sho thanks their innkeeper, she only stares at him blankly and apologises, because she had been out gathering oysters by the sea during the low tide.

*

It turns out that the woman in the peach-coloured yukata has companions, three other friends who have come with her from the next town. One of them too, Aoi, had been beckoned by her colours and with the news of the ships drawing closer to Edo, the others were driven to curiosity. So all of them had taken up their savings and walked the way here.

The nine of them share food, and under the maple trees overseeing the bay, anyone who chanced upon them would think them family or childhood friends. Once, during a lull in conversation, Sho is struck by how easy this is, to sit and watch the waves, the ships bobbing on the water and talk about their different lives. It is nothing that he has ever done; there is no talk of politics or the necessary consequences of lords’ motivations.

A breeze makes the maple trees shiver. Sho sees the way Aiba gestures when he speaks, how his smile lights up his eyes and his stories, green staining his hands now as he shows Toda a portrait of his niece, according to his own fond brush. He sees Nino, how he lounges against Ohno with no concern for propriety, and Jun, who is speaking with Kitagawa about the merchants of Osaka. Soon, Sho knows, Ohno will fall asleep against Jun’s shoulder, his breath evening out to the beating of the ocean against the shore, its slow inhale and exhale of the tide receding against the sand. Already, his eyes are slipping shut and his grip around his half-eaten onigiri is loose.

Slowly, the black ships seem to slip into the backs of everyone’s minds. The tricks hardly let up; Nino still finds joy in overbalancing those men who lean over the side, sending them tumbling into the clear water below. Jun still steals their ink pots and quills for his own, still ‘borrows’ their books for a read before returning them when Aiba starts sensing a disturbance in their owners. It is nothing considerable, though really, it had never been to start with.

But hardly anyone mentions them now. It would be rude to discuss matters of the state with a farmer who has taught his sons how to use their colours to care for their crops, or with a weaver who chooses thread trusting her colours to lead. On one late night when the rest have gone to sleep, Sho makes records of the conversations he has had, the lives of the new people he has met, their stories and discoveries and the colours of their hands.

And now, the ships fade against the shimmering horizon, under these new thoughts of someone else’s realities. The beasts of their figureheads rear up only like monsters of a child’s nightmare, bound to their ships by the comforting voice of a mother telling of the rising sun.

 

 

 

**Epilogue**

Where Nino’s magic is quick and patient as he is sharp-tongued and watchful, Aiba’s is nothing like. It somersaults in his veins when he conjures an illusion of salmon in a stream for his niece, each splash of them upstream sending her into fits of giggles. She has her colours too, and towards the end of summer, they spend a day by the sea, burying Aiba in the sand, roasting eel over an open fire and returning to his parents’ house afterwards, stinking of salt and fish guts.

They always used to say, “the man makes his magic.” But now they will shake their heads and concede “his time has a hand in it, too.”

Ohno learns how to call on typhoons and tornadoes on command, winds that whip the roofs off houses and split ships into halves, but still he sits for days in his rickety boat, bobbing on the waves without a word to anyone until he returns home smelling of the salty sea. Jun digs through the archives to find the old scroll that his mother mentioned so long ago, and discovers that his ancestors used the same indigo as his to sedate the enemy’s front lines before the first charge. While Nino’s still curls warm and lazy yellow around his wrist when he is half-asleep in Aiba’s futon, his also strikes so hard and fast in a duel that it leaves jagged scars in the dirt. Then there is Sho’s that grows pastel, pink almost like the sakura in spring when he is calm, when his head and Ohno’s are bent together in quiet conversation, which now turns crimson in a single instant when his anger laps at his eyes like bonfires in summer.

Aiba and Nino prefer him like that, though they will never say a word of it to him.

Autumn comes; then winter, spring and summer again.

One morning, Aiba rolls over to find the futons empty.

In his barely awakeness, he pats around instinctively for the warmth of Sho and Nino’s bodies. He hears them before the remnants of their colours mix with his; their voices quiet, tender murmurs in the grey light.

In a moment they will come back to bed, crawling in with their tired eyes and affectionate hands. Sho will rest his fingers on Aiba’s back, just over his heart. Perhaps he does it without thinking now. Then, Nino will yawn into Aiba’s collarbones, and Aiba will feel the damp warmth of his morning breath and fall back asleep dreaming about black ships with a typhoon of papers swirling about their decks, and the man from the north, and the empty expanse of these remaining sixty-two days. 

 

 

**fin.**

 

 

> “In these feeble days men tend to cling to peace; they are not fond of defending their country by war. They slander those of us who are determined to fight, calling us lovers of war, men who enjoy conflict. If matters become desperate they might, in their enormous folly, try to overthrow those of us who are determined to fight, offering excuses to the enemy and concluding a peace agreement with him. They would thus in the end bring total destruction upon us. In view of our country’s tradition of military courage, however, it is probable that once the Shogunate has taken a firm decision we shall find no such cowards among us.”

\-- _A Japanese Leader to the Shogunate, 14 August 1853_

 

>  “True to his word, Perry sailed back to Japan in early 1854 with a substantial fleet of nine ships, including three steam frigates. The bakufu agreed to allow American ships to stop over in the relatively remote ports of Shimoda and Hakodate. The Americans also won the right to station a consul in Shimoda. The terms of this Treaty of Kanagawa were extended to the European powers -- France, Britain, the Netherlands, Russia -- as well. The bakufu concession stopped short of an immediate opening to trade, but the Western powers quickly pressed their advantage.
> 
> [...] Rather, from the early 1800s through the 1860s, the very process of dealing with the pushy barbarians _created_ modern Japanese nationalism. Among shogunal officials, in daimyō castles, and in the private academies where politically concerned samurai debated history and policy, a new conception took hold of “Japan” as a single nation, to be defended and governed as such. As this happened, the Tokugawa claim to be Japan’s legitimate defender began to wither.”

_\-- The Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa Time to the Present, p. 50._

 

**Author's Note:**

> I enjoyed writing this SO MUCH. There's still a lot of this universe that I would love to explore one day. Thank you to Cheryl who told me I didn't suck, and to all the people who commented when it was originally posted. I was really nervous about how this would go down but seeing how people engaged and related to the narrative made me super happy.


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